


This Bed of Recall and Recollections

by Lil_Redhead



Series: Shirbert Oneshot + Drabble Collection [21]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Book readers will recognize this as House of Dreams compliant, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Married Life, Post Season 3, Shirbert, but you don't have be familiar with the books to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22249384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Redhead/pseuds/Lil_Redhead
Summary: Most of the time, it’s very convenient to have your husband as your doctor, except for the times he condemns you bedrest. A very pregnant Anne decides to open her chest of old memories to pass the last days before motherhood arrives. (A future shirbert drabble).
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Series: Shirbert Oneshot + Drabble Collection [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1075275
Comments: 30
Kudos: 380





	This Bed of Recall and Recollections

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Cresmix on tumblr! ♥ I hope you like it, love! There's a really mediocre edit on tumblr to go along with this, if you wanna head over to my blog ~ @royalcordelia. (it really is fairly pathetic, i'm a writer, not a graphic designer).

Anne knew there were bright sides to her current situation. The bed was impossibly soft underneath her, but stiff enough to support her weight against the headboard. She didn’t have to wear shoes in bed, either - an added plus. Just the thought of jamming her swollen toes into her dainty slippers as she had during the past several months had her cringing. 

_You were given your imagination for times like these,_ she scolded herself. _There are plenty of lovely things about being on bedrest. Why, I’ve had time to read all the books on my list, and then some!_ A bitter voice in the back of her mind reminded her that she’d read all the books on her list already - twice, some of them three times! Gilbert promised to bring home some new reading material soon, but he’d been so busy at his medical practice, that she’d long since stopped asking if he bore her any surprises. 

_Now there’s a bright side worth thanking the Lord for,_ she decided. Not every woman, exhausted with the many weights of pregnancy, got to have her husband as her doctor. Anne argued that Gilbert was better attuned to her symptoms than any of his patients. Perks of sharing a bed with him, she supposed. There was no husband around with more compassion and love for his ever-glowing wife, even with the unpleasant oddities it brought to their relationship. 

But it also meant that when her blood pressure had spiked to dangerous heights, Gilbert had said with very firm stringency that Anne S. C. Blythe - Queen of Conquering Obstacles and Goddess of Fortitude - was condemned to bedrest. At least until the new member of the house arrived. When the decree had been made, Anne was wise enough not to argue. 

“Every time a man speaks like he’s got a sour cranberry on his tongue, it means he means business,” said Susan, their beloved housekeeper, to _Mrs. Doctor Dear_ later that night. “And _that_ you may tie to.” 

Anne knew her husband better than that, though. Gilbert’s word, of course, did mean business, but she knew that a tiny part of him still held onto a poisonous drop of guilt. Susan might have claimed to know the Doctor better than most, but Anne was the one that Gilbert laid his head upon, weeping into her chest that it was his fault their first baby had died. _If I had just paid better attention...There must have been something I missed. How could I? My own daughter?_ Not even Anne’s softest touches through his hair or the honesty of her own unnecessary forgiveness could take away all of his remorse. When she’d informed him of their second chance, he’d been even more attentive than he’d been the first time. 

Thus, Anne was growing into a prisoner in her own bed. Her loving, caring husband, her jailor. 

With a sigh, Anne turned her gaze toward the window. Her soul sighed. It was golden hour, the most beloved time of day, when the PEI sun took a few moments out of its busy day to say hello to her. It always looked so sweet over the garden, the early spring buds glistening as if they had been touched by Midas himself. Against the bedposts, Anne tried to imagine the soft moss underneath her fingers or the richness of the soil of her flowers, but the mental image fell flat. 

Her window, though...Her window was only a few feet away from the bed. If she could just take a glimpse at the garden, maybe her heart wouldn’t feel so starved. 

The coolness of the floor felt wonderful underneath her heat swollen feet. With a careful hand behind supporting her back, Anne gently rose up for the first time in days. Her vision swirled, but she ignored the momentary vertigo and began to creep forward with astonishing stealth. If Susan heard her up on her feet, there’d be hell to pay, especially when Gilbert got home. Just as Anne was able to take a self-indulgent glance at her garden, a familiar voice broke through the bird-song silence. 

“Sweetheart, what on earth are you doing up?” 

Anne jolted, and she staggered like a drunken fool for balance. Gilbert was at her side before she could see him fly over to her, one hand in hers to keep her steady, the other against her back. She could sense a scolding on the tip of his tongue, but he bit his lips against it as he guided her back to bed. Settling at the edge of the bed together, Gilbert rubbed her knuckles with a tender touch. 

He could’ve begun his love-driven admonishment, but instead, he said, “A parcel came from Green Gables today. I stopped in town to pick it up.” 

Just the mention of home was enough for some of the weight on her shoulders to dissipate. Her gaze drifted from the wrapped box at the end of the bed back up to the hazel warmth of Gilbert’s eyes. He gave her his daily “ _I’m home”_ kiss and helped her shift back into her perch on the bed against the headboard. 

“I know that bedrest isn’t the most stimulating activity in the world, so I asked Marilla to send this,” Gilbert continued, placing the parcel in her lap. 

“What is it?” Anne asked, though she had already started tearing the brown paper away. She gasped when she found the wooden box underneath, fingers grazing over the grained smoothness. “It’s the box I kept when we were in college.” 

“I remembered you had a memory box, but you never told me what was in it. I hoped whatever was inside, it could be enough to convince you to sit in bed.”

Anne lifted the lid away and the contents of box overflowed onto her lap. 

“It’s so full because I kept every single letter you sent me over four years. But there’s some sketches from when I asked Cole to teach me how to draw. Oh, and look, a few pictures too.” 

Gilbert settled at her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“If it’s _every_ letter I sent you in college, that’s more reading than all of the Jane Austen books put together. We better start now if we want to finish by the time our new gentleman arrives.” 

Right on time, Susan rapped against the door with her elbow, a tray of tea and biscuits in her hands. 

“I put the tea on the stove as soon as the doctor came home. These are the last of the biscuits you like, Mrs. Doctor, but I’m baking more tomorrow. And there’s a piece of my cherry pie for you, Dr. Dear.” 

Anne grabbed Susan’s hand before she could walk away, and pressed a firm kiss to it. 

“You’re a blessing untold, Susan, thank you.” 

When they were alone again, Anne grabbed the first thing she could find: a letter. The bluish hue of the envelope and the familiar scrawl told her what she already knew. This letter had been one of the later ones she’d received during their fourth year of college. The blue envelopes had been Gilbert’s way of trying out professional stationary, and each letter was monogrammed at the top with the initials GJB. As for the nearly illegible scrawl of her name and address, that was a bad habit he’d picked up from his medical professors. 

“When did I send that one?” he asked, peeking over from his own reading. 

“The April of 1904. I remember it without even needing to check.” 

It took a moment, but Gilbert suddenly remembered what the letter said. He could picture exactly what his desk and room looked like the day he wrote it with the clarity of a photograph. Long lost in fireplace ash, there were several burned attempts that had come before the finished product that Anne know held in her hands. 

“ _This is a question I had every intention of asking in person, but I find my patience has evaporated with the months our of separation,”_ Anne read softly. “ _Say that there was a velvet pouch in my pocket. Say that it contained a peridot ring that my mother once bore on her own hand. (Breathe, darling, I’m not proposing over correspondence. What I mean to ask is - ) Would you find yourself open to the idea of wearing it in the foreseeable future? If there was a fellow who had a question to ask - a plead, a beg really - would you be ready to answer the next time you saw him?”_

The ring of his tender descriptions now rested on Anne’s hand, a little tight with her swollen fingers, but still glistening and lovely just the same. Gilbert took the hand and pressed a kiss to the stone that his father had chosen for his mother, the same stone that was a perfect green on his redheaded wife.

“Do you remember what I replied?” she asked, nuzzling her cheek against his touch. 

“Not exactly,” Gilbert admitted with a fond smile. “I think as soon as I read your response, my entire brain stopped functioning and I all but floated around Toronto for the next month.” 

Her shoulders shook against him as she chuckled. 

“What’s that you’re looking at?” Gilbert revealed the journal that had been placed in his lap. Its leather was the same color as Anne’s girlhood horse, Belle and was tied around the middle with a strap. “Ah, the proof of my stint with art.” 

“You were genuinely talented!” Gilbert argued. To prove his point, he flipped open the sketchbook to one of the middle pages. “This one is my favorite.” 

Of course it was, she thought with an amused smirk. He had skipped over the pages where she’d sketched pink carnations - briefly wondering if he recognized they were the ones he’d brought her during one of his visits - and focused on the page where Anne had drawn one of the Blythe-Lacroix apples. 

“ _Anne Blythe, Gilbert S. C. Blythe…”_ he read with interest. “If I didn’t know better, Mrs. Blythe, I’d say you were in love with me!” 

“Oh, be quiet. If I didn’t doodle my feelings like an infatuated schoolgirl, I’d have dropped out of Queen’s and transferred to Toronto.” 

“You wouldn’t have found arguments from me,” Gilbert said with a shrug. 

Anne nudged him with her elbow, but kept flipping through the box with interest. Mostly, she found letters. To his delight, it seemed that not a single one had been lost over time. Each one was a treasure, and she’d treated them as such. Some of his more romantic ones appeared to have more wear, as if she’d found them in her hours of loneliness and reread the words in his voice. There were tear smudges, small rips in the corners, memories of smiles, and residual pining that never actually went away. Some of Gilbert’s later letters admitted the way he’d desired her, craved her touch and counted the days before he could love her in the ways he was meant to as a man. It made Anne glad that Marilla had always respected her privacy. If Rachel Lynde had read those letters and found Gilbert Blythe longing to kiss the soft skin of Anne’s breast, she likely would’ve shipped the young girl to France or England herself. 

Lost in her amusement, Anne almost didn’t hear Gilbert sigh beside her. He held an old photograph in his hands, one that she groaned at the sight of. She’d sat for several portraits during her lifetime, but never before did she feel as unattractive as she did in the one he held.

“I ought to have just thrown that in the fire,” she commented. He gaped at her in surprise. 

“What do you mean? Why have I never seen this one?!” he exclaimed. His eyes roved over the picture, and suddenly he felt like the eighteen-year-old boy losing his breath at the sight of her. In the portrait, Anne wore a demure, neutral smile on her lips and wine red blossoms behind her ear. And her _hair_...Gilbert suspected that if Aphrodite or Hera were really out there, they envied the ocean waves of her auburn hair. “Anne, this is breathtaking.” 

Anne paused before finally answering in a rush. “I originally planned to send it to you because you’d been asking for one, and I know how much you like my red hair so I asked the man to hand color for me.” 

“I think he did a fine job!” Gilbert added, still confused. 

“He did a _fine job_ commenting on my hair, too,” Anne stated bitterly. “He said he never saw such _salmon_ hair in all his years. _Salmon,_ Gilbert. There was no way I could send the picture after that.”

Gilbert laughed heartily at this, shaking his head at the stubborn rage of his beautiful, impeccable wife. 

“Well, darling, what’s mine is yours, and what’s yours…” He snatched the picture from her hands and stuffed it inside his jacket pocket. “Is mine! I’ll be holding onto this in my own memory box.” 

Anne might’ve argued, but he rose from the bed with a kiss to her forehead. In any other circumstances, she would have followed him until she could reclaim what was hers, but that would’ve involved rising like Christ from her bed. If she owed her husband anything after all the years he’d stayed loyal through her stubbornness and her flares of anger, it was to heed his word and remain in bed. 

Still, with him gone, she missed his warmth and wondered if she might convince him to sit beside her just a little longer.

“You need to eat, my love,” he concluded. “I’m going to go help Susan with dinner. Drink some tea, alright? You need to be sure you’re drinking enough fluids.” 

“I’m hydrating for two, I know.” 

Right before he disappeared out of the room, he let his eyes linger on her - the loveliness of her white bed gown, the sunlight on her hair, the loving glint in her warm blue gaze. He could taste the words on the tip of his tongue, hundreds of _I love yous_ that he could mutter with all the breath in his lungs. Instead, he exhaled a shaky breath and said, “Let me know if you find anything else of interest.” 

Anne nodded with a smile, finally looking the most comfortable she’d been in days. She reached back down to the very bottom of the box and pulled out the oldest letter she it contained. 

_“My Anne, I cannot think of a more wonderful way to start a letter…”_

**Author's Note:**

> In your own fic, you get to reference your own stories! If you want to see more of Gilbert's letters to Anne, pop over to my other story, The Secret of Distance. The last line of this one actually comes from Gilbert's first letter in that story. 
> 
> Please let me know how you liked it! ♥ As always, feel free to pop over to tumblr if you ever wanna chat!


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